Prospective students are a little more sophisticated today than in the past. They conduct more research before making a decision. And they rely heavily on the information they find online.
So what can you do to increase your school’s conversion rates and get more students?
Getting started
Do not waste too much time only catering to the website visitors ready to enrol today. Start helping other prospects that are just beginning their journey in selecting a program and school. You will be amazed at how many additional leads you can generate.
Here are some tips to start:
- Create your student persona.
- Create educational content that is geared towards prospects just beginning their search.
- Make sure this content is easy to find on your website.
- Set up landing pages for valuable content offers (get their email address).
- Use marketing automation software to nurture leads into new students.
- Measure and adjust your campaigns according to your needs.
Understand your prospective student
Before you can promote your school to prospects, you need to create a student persona. It is a semi-fictional representation of your ideal student. Understanding who your student persona is, the challenges they face, the things the like and dislike will allow you to approach your message and strategy with great accuracy.
Create educational content
Most visitors on your website are prospects just beginning to conduct their research. Most likely they are not ready to complete an application just yet. They are just trying to determine if a field of study you offer is of interest to them. Essentially, they are researching how the various options they have for schools compare to one another.
Create educational content for someone just beginning their research. This type of content should be helpful and not focused on pitching your school or programs. Its focal point is to serve as a convenient guide covering everything they need to know about what interests them.
Get their information
The valuable content outlined in the previous section is just that, valuable. It is valuable enough that someone with enough interest would gladly exchange an email address for it. That is the only way you can continue to communicate with someone that has expressed an interest in becoming a student at your school.
Be their guide
So we know a prospect has shown interest in a programme your school offers. So how do you get them to take the next step? You have their email address and should start sending them emails containing additional information that will help them in their decision.
This will help you achieve the following things:
- Keep the prospects progression through their journey. You want to continue serving them valuable information.
- Establish their criteria. Cater the content you create to prioritise the strengths of your school as the top criteria to consider while evaluating options.
- Provide priceless credibility. When you are the one education them along the way, you become the authority. You become a trusted advisor.
Using marketing automation software is the ideal solution for delivering these emails. There are many options available. Some are simple and lower in price, others can be much more complex and a bit expensive.
Measure your success
Everything you have done up to this point should be evaluated and refined. That is how you can be sure you get the maximum conversion rate from the traffic coming to your website.
Leveraging the use of marketing automation software will make tracking easy. It will give you a clear understanding of how much website traffic is being converted into students through each step of the funnel. If you see a drop in rates at one point in your process, you know which part of your message to refine to achieve maximum conversions.
At faethe.marketing we have been helping schools to effectively get more students. By increasing your school’s conversion rates you inevitably get more students. So if you are looking to recruit the best matching students for your programmes with minimal cost and effort, feel free to reach out to us.